


Lilac

by sasiml



Series: another chance at who you really are [1]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, Goes AU post Recession Proof, House and Rachel bonding at it's finest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 04:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5277197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasiml/pseuds/sasiml
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House and Rachel in the car over the course of her school days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lilac

**Author's Note:**

> So I've had this in my drafts since like March, back when I was sitting in boarding school in Maine, and just now finished it, at 5:49 am, eight months later. I used to write a lot for the House fandom back in the day, but this is really the first thing I think I've written since I've grown up, and I'm really proud of it.

House really wasn't sure how it started.

Actually scratch that, he knew exactly how it started. 

When Rachel had started Kindergarten, Cuddy had sat him down and given him a choice. Either he could start taking Rachel to school in the mornings, or she could conveniently start noticing that he doesn't show up to work until near noon, and start giving him two hours if clinic duty for every hour of work missed. 

Cuddy wasn't trying to force him in to unwanted responsibility or parental bonding, she just had to get work and it was normal for him to waltz in to work in the middle of the day, and Rachel's school was in the opposite direction of the hospital. And even if House wasn't ready to admit it, they were a family, and families share responsibility. 

So taking the brat to school it was.   


Rachel, of course, was ecstatic with this arrangement. She absolutely adored House. He let her stay up past her bedtime and watch cartoons whenever, and when he packed her lunch she always got fun stuff like fruit roll ups instead of the organic rice cakes mommy would put in.   


But what she really loved about House was that he talked to her like an adult. While Uncle Wilson's puppet shows and tickle fights were fun, sometimes she just needed to talk and feel like someone was listening.   


So that was that. House was now on drop off duty.  


The morning routine seemed to work out without much hassle. Cuddy would wake her up and lay her clothes out for her before she left, and all House had to do was feed her and put her in the car. He found it was pretty easy to appease Rachel first thing in the morning. Just turn on her favorite Disneymania CD that kept rotating from car to car or tell her a gory story from the hospital and she was entertained. Piece of cake.   


Of course there were the days when Rachel would talk animatedly, seated diagonally from him, about whatever she was looking forward to that morning. What she was bringing for share time or a treat they were making for snack or who she was excited to romp around the playground with.

"Me and Lilly-Beth-"   
  
"Licky-Beth and I, Rachel." House corrected.   
  
"Lilly."   
  
"Whatever. If you go around talking like an uneducated moron everyone's gonna think I do too and do I look like a moron?"   
  
"Sometimes." Rachel replied giggling.   
  
"Says the kid who has a friend named Licky-Bum." He shot back. "Who's named Licky-Bum?”  
  
"Lilly-Beth, stupid." Rachel corrected. 

He knew that of course. He just wanted to hear her laugh again. 

"Mommy wouldn't like hearing you calling me names.”

”Mommy says you're a dummy sometimes." Rachel said.   
  
"Yeah well the New England Medical Journal would happen to disagree with her." 

Rachel stuck out her tongue in response. 

It certainly put a cramp in his style. The bike now had to be reserved for weekends or days when he could stop back home and drop off his car. It also meant a lilac booster seat was now semi-permanently strapped in to his back seat. 

The booster seat did do a number on his pride initially, when Wilson met him in the parking lot and did a double take, or when Taub chased after him waving biopsy results when he was about to pull out of the garage. 

"And you have a purple car seat because?" He asked.   
"It brings out my eyes." House bit back. 

He debated weather or not to shove the damn thing in the trunk when he wasn't using it, purely just to shut everyone up and not do too much damage to his bad ass facade, but then Rachel grew out of car seats entirely. 

"The back looks so empty without Rachel's car seat." Wilson remarked, climbing in to the passenger seat for bowling night.   
  
"Yeah well now you can see all the spilled Cheerios and crap she just throws around. Plus there's no way she's big enough to be without a car seat. Have you seen her? she's a midget." House complained.   
  
"She's the required height and weight." Wilson reminded him.   
  
"Yeah if you don't count intelligence in aging she should be fine."  
  
"House, yesterday you were showing her off to clinic patients to prove their inferiority."  
  
"That was before she let it slip to Cuddy this morning that I don't have a case and had to spend another day in the clinic." House said, turning on to the turnpike.   
  
"You miss it.”  
  
"What?"  
  
"The car seat." Wilson elaborated. "The car seats gone which means she's growing up.”  
  
"Yeah kids do that. If they don't it's cause for worry. We do however get to mock them for the rest of their lives.”  
  
"It's ok to miss it." Wilson said.   
  
"You know what I really miss? When you drove." House responded. 

Eventually Cheerios for breakfast in the car were replaced with string cheese, and Rachel's car seat was collecting dust in the garage. House pulled in to the parking lot the Monday before Thanksgiving break of her third grade year.

 "I can't walk you in today Rach." House told her.   
  
"Why not?" She asked, "You need to sign me in."   
  
"Just tell your teacher it's not a good pain day for me." House said. "Marina will pick you up and take you to piano ok?”  
  
Rachel nodded, getting out of the car. "Ok. Feel better, House." 

He was lying of course. It was a relatively pain-free day. In all honestly, he was just tired of the way the other parents looked at him. There was a very specific look amongst New Jersey private school parents, and he didn't have it. Of course, the other parents were for the most part losers and idiots, and there were maybe four working mothers in the class of twenty-two, none of them even came close to the level of qualification or even work hours that Cuddy had. Even though House could and would rationalize his superiority, there was a small part of him that was a little sad when groups of parents would stare and walk away. 

He knew he wasn't classic father material. He knew he wasn't even really Rachel's father. It was just sometimes having this little family felt so natural to him he let himself forget that it wasn't of the norm to the rest of high-society Jersey suburbs. That a middle aged man with a dry wit and an empty ring finger was not usually the person standing outside classrooms at one of the most elite private elementary schools in the state. That getting in and out of the line for the sign in sheet as fast as possible was usually not the first concern of the adults standing around with a Starbucks cup in hand. That having a somewhat strange and undefined relationship with the child they were signing in, regardless of legal guardianship and parental rights, was not what the rest of this world was experiencing.  


The next morning he walked Rachel in to the classroom and signed her in like he was supposed to. He started to walk out the door when he started to notice the scene in front of him. While Rachel's peers were all huddled together rejoicing in the fact they were reunited after a painstaking seventeen hours, Rachel was at her desk with the newest book she had become obsessed with, and the situation seemed all too familiar to him.   
  
“Why don’t any of Rachel’s friends ever come over? With the exception of you know, that one chick with the weird name from Pre-school.” House asked one evening with his head poking around the refrigerator. 

“Don’t pretend to don’t know her name she’s been over for dinner at least a hundred times.” Cuddy said, and then shrugged. “I guess she doesn’t really have any friends from school.” She paused. “Are you of all people seriously complaining that the house isn’t crawling with children on a regular basis?”

House closed the fridge, finally settling on the carton of raspberries on the bottom shelf.

“No of course not. I’ve just heard tell that kids need socialization, or else they’ll end up blaming their parents for their lack of inter-personal success later in life. I’m really just being pragmatic, you know, looking out for our future.” 

Cuddy smiled, pretending to buy the facade. “I think we’ll be ok. She has piano and the kids on her hockey team. She’s not totally isolated.” 

“Yeah because knowing how to play the piano really helped me.” He muttered, putting the fruit back in the fridge, purely as an excuse to turn his face away from his girlfriend. 

“For what it’s worth I think you turned out somewhat tolerable.” She said. “Everyone finds their people at a different age. Rachel is going to be fine.”

And she was. By the time Middle School rolled around and Rachel had moved up to the front seat, she found a place in the mix of a group of smart, sporty, and somewhat quirky kids, whose presence in and out of his front door slowly drove him mad. 

“Can you pick me up from Nikole’s after hockey practice instead of from school?” Rachel asked one morning, fidgeting with the radio on the way to school.  
  
“Leave that damn thing alone you just skipped over Dizzy Gillespie.” House complained. “Have I taught you nothing at all? Was the small fortune in music lessons I provided you with completely useless?”  
  
Rachel rolled her eyes. “I completely respect and acknowledge the talent of 20th century smooth jazz artists. I also completely respect and acknowledge and _enjoy_ the existence of top 40 radio.”   
  
House groaned. “What time do you think you’ll be done at Riley’s?”  
  
“Nikole’s.”  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
“Probably like seven or eight?”

House nodded as he pulled in to the school driveway and pass the dining hall, carefully avoiding the boarding students who were walking to class. “Yeah. I can come get you provided nobody decides to die today.”  
  
Rachel reached for her backpack. “Do you think your patient is going to die?” She asked.  
  
House shook his head. “Nah. That would just be rude. Then how else will you get home from Margaret’s?”  
  
“Nikole's.”  
  
“Whatever.”

 “She’s driving me insane.” House complained, shuffling down the line in the cafeteria. 

“Who, Cuddy?” Wilson asked absentmindedly.  
  
“The little Cuddy.”  
  
They had made it up to the register, and House stuck his plate next to Wilson’s.  
  
“Ah.” Wilson said, fumbling for his credit card. “Why?”  
  
House paused for a moment while they searched for a seat. “She’s messing with the radio.” He says.   
  
Wilson raised his eyebrows. “You used to play Radio Disney in the car for her, suddenly her taste in music bothers you?”  
  
“No, her taste in music is fine, as it should be when you spent your entire childhood sitting next to me on a piano bench.” House was quiet for a few moments, picking at his fries. “She keeps going over to her friends after school.”

Wilson sighed. “House she’s thirteen. She’s her own person now. Finding her place, experiencing new freedoms, you know. You should be enjoying this, soon enough she’ll be driving herself to school and practice and parties, and you’re gonna have to find other ways to connect with her.” 

After a year of drivers ed and House clutching at the dashboard and “Rachel Cuddy this car is vintage and if you ever want me to sign those DMV forms you better watch where the hell you’re going”, eventually the time did come when Rachel passed her drivers test, and for Hanukah that year, she was given a 2003 Volvo sedan with a “my other ride is a pair of skates” license plate holder and the complete freedom to take herself to and from school on her own. 

“You going to miss your mornings with her?” Cuddy asked, pulling her pajama top over her head. 

“Are you kidding?” House said, eyes closed against his pillow. “I can finally sleep past seven again. I don’t have to rush from the middle of a case to get her to hockey practice. This is paradise. I can even get the bike back out.” 

Cuddy smirked and pulled back the covers to curl up next to him. “You know you might be getting a little too old for the bike.”

“Bitch.” He grumbled. 

Cuddy chuckled. “You aren’t worried that you guys might drift apart?”

“I find that the young people don’t really like to associate with The Man anyway, seeing less of each other will be good long term.”

It wasn’t. In fact, they barely did anything together past her hockey games or Chinese food in his office. After 15 years of cohabitation, he virtually had no idea what was going on in her life. Which was fine. He didn’t need to know every single move she made at all times. He always hated helicopter parents, and took pride in the fact that Rachel was incredibly self sufficient. She never needed to hang on to her parents when she started school, or begged to call home when she was away at camp. She knew how to make herself dinner and start on her homework, all the things people with working parents did. But over the course of the last decade he had started to open up, he had started to be able to consistently rely on two people, and it felt good to know that there was someone out there who relied on him.  He didn’t like being vulnerable. Actually, he avoided being open at all costs. But there really was something about this that left him bare. 

“House, for better or for worse, for all intensive purposes you are her father.” Wilson had said. 

“I’m not-” House started. 

“You _are.”_ Wilson insisted. “You read her to sleep when she had nightmares, you took care of her when she was sick. You taught her to play jazz piano and signed every goddamn permission slip for field trips and summer camps and god knows what.”

House was silent. “I never adopted her.”  
  
“Yeah and you never married the woman you’ve been with for the better part of two decades. Clearly making things official is not your thing.” Wilson said. “Look, Rachel is always going to need you, your relationship is just going to evolve.”

As per usual, Wilson was right. It was late when House’s phone buzzed against the hardwood of his nightstand. 

“Yeah?”

“Hey, House. I need you to come get me.” Rachel’s voice said from the other line.  
  
“What the hell? Where are you?” He asked, making his way to the hallway as not to wake Cuddy up. 

“I’m at school, and I just, some of the boarders snuck in some whiskey and things just started to go down and I just can you please come get me I promise to tell you everything I just-”

“Yeah, ok.”

By the time House pulled up to Rachel’s school she was already standing by the brick clad entrance. He flashed his lights at her, and she ducked in to the passenger seat. 

They drove in silence for a while until, “A sophomore overdosed on acid tonight.” 

House raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t I paying almost forty-thousand dollars a year to make sure shit like that doesn’t happen?”  
  
“Technically the salaries for the dorm parents and perks for the proctors come out of the boarding tuition which is significantly higher but yeah, basically.” Rachel said. “He’s fine by the way, thanks for asking, one of the nurses came back to campus.”

“Are you going to be in trouble?” House asked, turning on to the main road. 

“They took down names but I left early enough so they didn’t notice me.” Rachel reassured him.  
  
The car was silent again for a while until House remembered “I stuck a bottle of water for you in the back seat. Didn’t know how drunk you’d be.” He said. 

“Thanks. I’m fine though I just really had one or two drinks.”  There was a pause, and then, “Are you gonna tell mom?” 

“I wasn’t planning on it, not that I think she’d particularly care, but you know.” House said. 

“It’s just easier not to tell her and have to deal with it.” Rachel finished for him. 

 “You could put that in a book. _You Know You Were Raised by Gregory House When: An Autobiography by Rachel Cuddy._ ” House remarked.

“With its sequel, _Which Came First? The Lying or the Kid?”_ Rachel said giggling.

“Oh definitely the lying.” House said laughing with her. 

And then graduation came.The house was full with Arlene and Julia and Rachel’s cousins, so naturally Cuddy had ducked out first thing in the morning to “stake out seats” which really meant escape, which left House to take Rachel to the ceremony. Rachel was graduating as a member of both the Cum Laude Society, and the National Honor Society, and headed to Barnard in the fall.

“We’re taking pictures in The Circle before the ceremony remember?” Rachel reminded him as she came down the hall from her room, adjusting the strap on her heel. 

“Got’cha.” House said, getting up from the couch and grabbing his cane. “You ready to go?”

Rachel nodded, fidgeting with the straps on her dress. House smiled. “You know you used to have a booster seat that was the same color as that dress.” He said. “I used to get so much crap for it at work.” 

Rachel laughed. “Yeah I remember it! Only I think it was lilac, this dress is more of a lavender.”

“Yeah, because thats a huge difference.” House said seriously. 

He looked at her again. This was the same child that used to spit up on him in his office, throw cheerios around his car, and sit in the corner of her class with a book way past her grade reading level. But at the same time, she wasn’t, and he didn’t quite know what to think about that. 

House took a deep breath. “You look beautiful, Rach.” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. 

She smiled. “Not bad for second in my class.” 

"You were cheated.” 

She shrugged. “We should get going, day students always seem late to these things anyway.”

 House nodded absentmindedly. “I wonder how much your mother has had to drink this morning just to get through an hour with your grandmother.” He asks, walking out the front door. 

Rachel follows. “I don’t know but probably not as much as you’d need to.” she replied.  
  
House shook his head, opening the passenger door for her. “Not with you in the car.”

 


End file.
